Silence Gagged and Golden

You can thank me for keeping your RSS feed whistle-clean, but my oughtta-write-that list is about to burst. There’s been a lot of nifty shiz that I’ve been up to over the last year or so that hasn’t made its way up to the blog. And like trees falling in the woods, if no one’s there to hear, it’s like it never really happened.

So hear me now or hear me later. I keep my lips zipped too much these days — and such silence is not spun of gold.

However, for Exhibit One, I’ll throw out a nicely-countered counter-example. Lou Reed & Metallica’s exposition of what not to do when the mic’s been passed to you:

The music doesn’t really bug me. Great art is hard to come by, and just because you throw some world-class talents (if you ask the fans) together doesn’t mean that the Godz will descend and mightily bless the frets. But it was worth a shot.

The budget’s what gets me. Months before this came out, there were websites built and photos printed and talk-shows booked. Did someone think they had a hit? Strange to think about how much went into putting this on the shelf, to carefully craft the image, to have it all undone by some clerk with a well-witted sharpie and a little free time.